Name: Fricassee of Chicken
Ingredients: 1 chicken; 3/4 pint Cream Bechamel Sauce (No. 13); 12 chopped button mushrooms

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Fricassee of Chicken

Ingredients

1 chicken
3/4 pint Cream Bechamel Sauce (No. 13)
12 chopped button mushrooms

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Boil the chicken until cooked.
Let the chicken cool.
Cut the chicken into neat joints.

Make the sauce and stew

In a saucepan, combine the Cream Bechamel Sauce and chopped mushrooms.
Add the chicken joints to the sauce.
Let them stew together.

Serve

Arrange the chicken in the center of a serving dish.
Pour the sauce over it before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,500 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,480 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle stewing in the sauce.
Cream bechamel sauce: Forms the creamy body of the dish and coats the chicken joints.
Button mushrooms: Add earthy flavour and a soft texture to the creamy sauce.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.